«Тахиййат»: Сборник статей в честь Н. Н. Дьякова

m 156 n John Masson Smith, Jr. What enabled the conquests that Chinggis led? The Mongols shared with the other nomads of Inner Asia — the steppe country from Hungary to Ko- rea 1 — a military heritage accumulated over two millennia, from the first re- ported impact of nomads, Cimmerians and Scythians, on historic polities in East Anatolia and Mesopotamia in the eighth-sixth centuries B.C. 2 , on Per- sia’s King Cyrus, killed by the nomadic Massagetae in Central Asia in ca. 530 B.C. 3 , on China by the fourth century B. C. 4 , and thereafter on all peoples in and around Inner Asia. They shared weaponry, primarily bows and arrows; tactics, especially hit-and-run mounted archery; mounts and subsistence ani- mals provided by pastoralism and logistics based on them; strategies utilizing these tactical and logistical capabilities; and identification by clan, organiza- tion by tribe and leadership by chiefs. The heritage also included the cultural commonality of warriorism. The combination had made the nomads resilient and dangerous antagonists of the adjacent settled world 5 . Besides this ancient inheritance, recent local history had revealed to the Mongols a new way of offsetting the main weakness of nomads: small popu- lations and smaller armies, by integrating nomad and sedentary troops into a standing army. The incorporation of Chinese troops in a barbarian army is a matter of early record, but what was sporadic and temporary... became a well-integrated pattern of warfare in the hands of the Ch’i-tan [Kitans, founders of the Liao Dynasty, 907–1125]. Under their rule, non-tribal foot soldiers and technical troops became a permanent and numerically 1 By this definition, the steppe regions in Eastern Europe are also in East Inner Asia. 2 M. N. Van Loon, Urartian Art (Istanbul: Nederlands Historisch-Archaeolgisch Instituut, 1966), 15–17, 20–25. 3 Herodotus Persian Wars, Book I, Chs. 201–216 — note the description of the weapons and tactics of the nomadic Massagetae in 214–215. R.N. Frye, The Heritage of Persia (New York: New American Library, 1966 [1963]), 110–111. 4 Sima Qian (Ssu-ma Ch’ien) cites the adoption of barbarian-style riding, mounted ar- chery and clothing suitable for these to the Chao dynasty, in his “Account of the Hsiung- nu” in Records of the Grand Historian of China , trans. Burton Watson (NY: Columbia UP, 1961) 2 vols. 159. This innovation was clearly in response to a newly-threatening, newly cavalry-using, kind of barbarian; the earlier kind fought on foot and from chariots, and built walls — like the Chinese. The innovation was ordered in the late fourth century B.C., in 307 B.C. according to J. Needham, Science and Civilization in China , vol. 5, part VI, p. 7. 5 For the early years of the eastern Inner Asian part, see D.A. Graff, Medieval Chinese Warfare, 300–900 London: Routledge, 2002).